Calendar of Charters and Documents Relating to Selborne and Its Priory Preserved in the Muniment Room of Magdalen College, Oxford (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Calendar of Charters and Documents Relating to Selborne and Its Priory Preserved in the Muniment Room of Magdalen College, Oxford

There are not many instances of the existence of original monastic muniments preserved together in their entirety from the foundation of the house to which they relate up to the time of its extinction. But such an instance occurs in the case of the Priory of Selborne. And the preservation of its records is due to the one cause which in every such instance has alone been the means of preserving them from dispersion and destruction, namely, the transfer of the monastic property, en bloc, to some collegiate foundation, which then laid up safely in its muniment room the documents which came with that property. But even in these instances the term muniments has to be taken in its strictly limited sense of title-deeds. It was as title-deeds to property, not as historical documents of value in themselves, that the charters were preserved; and consequently such rich sources of information for later ages as sacrist-rolls, rent-rolls, farm-accounts, obit-rolls, and the like, and even, sometimes, for all that appears to the contrary, the contents of libraries,l were disregarded.

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